Rabbi Eleanor Smith - January 30th Memorial

Since the planning of this gathering perhaps you, like I, have struggled over the proper way to name this service, even if only in our minds. It is at a time like this that we fully appreciate how deeply language codes our lives. When we know we are going to a funeral, then we know what to wear and what to say and how to hold our faces to show all the feelings that go together with funerals. The hole in our language that leaves us without the perfect word for this service for Ben is probably a good reflection of the experience for Ben's family and closest friends, the swirl of grief and hope and waiting and devastation that fits precisely into no established category of conduct or comfort or closure. This afternoon, we come together with the task of making something whole of all the loose and tragic threads that remain, something tight enough to carry the mourners forward in time and yet something permeable to light and hope.

I have heard so many people respond to the news about Ben with the word “unbelievable.” In the simplest sense, this is true. An adventuring, beloved young man so full of love and life and talent can't just disappear this way, far away in some exotic place that few of us have ever been - it is unbelievable. Mother nature, our great source of inspiration, is not supposed to erupt in a ferocious spasm of death that grabs up lives by the thousands, including our native son. In the Torah, God commands us to choose life. That would be a tall order but for the fact that in the very blueprint of our creation, we humans are fundamentally wired to choose life, to have irrational hope and to be undaunted by impossible odds. Losing Ben undermines all these inborn reflexes, it turns the heart inside out and disorients the spirit of everyone who knew and loved Ben Abels and the thousands of other unfinished lives around the shrinking world we live in. The only good news is that we don't have to get it all down today. We don't have to leave the sanctuary this afternoon with the finished story, with our faith in tact, with our understanding complete. Perhaps all we will have in an hour is the common pledge to remember him and to continue to support his family. Time is the hope's great collaborator, and more time is needed before we can speak of healing, or be gracious or coherent in the face of his loss.

The website BenAbels.com is an overwhelming tribute to who and how Ben was in the world, with the most extraordinary expressions of affection and respect from so many who knew Ben. But it is a few memories of Hopes' that stand tallest in my mind. As most of us here know well, there is very little that is reciprocal about parenting, at least for the first few decades. To be a parent is pour the very best and most prolific of your life resources on your child. Along the way, our childrens' spontaneous expressions of love and gratitude have enormous meaning, more than they could ever know, and Ben was a child who gave back early and often. Ben often showed up at home with flowers for Hope, for no reason more fancy than love. He surprised his parents one year, just after finishing college; he flew home to be with them for their anniversary. It is Ben's abundant qualities of thoughtfulness, presence, generosity and an expansive imagination that have beckoned and galvanized this community that sits here together today.

May the words of memory and tribute we are about to share soften the corners of an impossible grief for Hope, Bob, David, Heather and Emmett, and all the others who claim Ben as family. Holding Ben close and tight, may our faith be improbably strong for the living that we all have yet to do and may Ben's name, his memory and his beautiful face be a blessing for us and for the world. Amen.